The Korea Institute of Materials Science (KIMS, President Choi Cheol-jin) has played a key role in supporting the national materials industry for the past three years, contributing greatly to strengthening the growth foundation of materials companies.

The Korea Materials Research Institute announced on the 8th that the results of its own investigation into the performance of corporate support based on the 'Material Components Corporate Support Project' showed that the performance over the past three years was high.

After conducting its own investigation into the business support work performed through an evaluation of the operation of the organization and examining quantitative indicators, the Korea Materials Research Institute found that it had provided support worth 14.5 billion won in business expenses and supported a total of 3,687 cases of technology for 1,756 companies.

This is based on the three major types of corporate support categorized by the National Research Council for Science and Technology: support for responding to on-site demands, technology support based on R&D (research and development), and support for utilizing public infrastructure using existing infrastructure.

The 'Comprehensive Service Enterprise Support Project' carried out by the Korea Materials Research Institute is a core project that has invested 1 billion won of its own operating expenses every year for four consecutive years up to this year.

This project aimed to commercialize the company's main products, and the representative result was the generation of new sales for the company.

This creates a virtuous cycle in which researchers' technology fees are generated as new sales are generated by the company and reinvested in the corporate support budget.

As of 2023, 14 companies were selected and supported. It was found that the company greatly contributed to strengthening the foundation for sustainable growth through new sales of 17.91 billion won, cost reduction of 1.43 billion won, creation of 13 jobs, 4 market developments, and registration of intellectual property rights through technology development.

In addition, since 2017, the Korea-Germany Materials Research Institute has been continuously carrying out the 'Korea-Germany Materials Center' project in Phase 1 (July 2017 - December 2022) and Phase 2 (January 2023 - December 2025) as a global enterprise support project through international cooperation with Changwon City.

This project supports joint research on advanced technologies that are difficult to support domestically based on a network with the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany, the world's largest industrial support research institute, and also supports a technology exchange meeting held in Germany every September.

In Germany, there are also opportunities to directly check and verify the infrastructure and technological level of support organizations.

This project is receiving additional support from the Materials Research Institute budget separate from the Changwon City budget, and it has been revealed that a total of 39 companies have been supported with an additional budget of 10.42 billion won to date.

Through this, it helped three companies in Changwon City successfully list on the domestic stock market through IPO (Initial Public Offering).

Choi Chul-jin, president of the Korea Materials Research Institute, said, “The long-standing R&D of government-funded research institutes can have true meaning when it is utilized usefully in industry.” He added, “The core of the plan to revitalize cooperation support for SMEs is to avoid sporadic support and establish a sustainable support system, thereby inducing participation in projects by linking local government key projects, actively encouraging companies to invest, and strengthening incentives for researchers. Accordingly, we will continue to make efforts so that the Korea Materials Research Institute’s ‘Materials and Components Enterprise Support Project’ can present innovative results differentiated from the past.”